Leave it to Gretchen Morgenson to trumpet a simple change of business conditions as a major corporate scandal. Of course, if a corporate director does so much as play tennis, Gretchen concludes the tennis game is inherently designed to exploit individual investors. The real story behind her commentary is just not that big a deal.

Here's what happened: in 2002, IBM made an outsourcing deal with JP Morgan Chase. The deal placed 4,000 IBM consultants at the client for several years. However, the client recently decided it would end the contract, saying it would rather handle its technology needs in-house.

According to Gretchen, this isn't just a loss of a contract--it represents an invalidation of IBM's entire outsourcing strategy. Which, of course, IBM supposedly oversold to investors. Just ask Jack Nincompoop, president of Nincompoop Capital Management (Gretchen likes to quote these kinds of sources).

Here's a more disinterested take on the situation since I don't have a pre-set agenda: first, business conditions change. As it turns out (if you dig deep enough in the article), JP Morgan Chase became part of Bank One. The economy is also very different now than in 2002. Then, outsourcing was especially appealing because that meant you didn't have to hire your own full-time employees. Now, with some signs that technology investments are lower risk, reasonable people may conclude that the outsourcing vs. full-time calculus has shifted. Or they may not. Maybe Bank One has access to 4,000 people that can do the job better so breaking the contract is good for its own shareholders in the long run. Who knows? This is called a free market.

Any reasonable person should know that business conditions can change. And anyone with any experience knows that a client reference is just a reference. Does the market feel it was duped? Or does it feel IBM's financial results are now suspect? At last check, IBM was down from around $87 to slightly above $86 per share. Gretchen's apparent belief that she is smarter than the market has been proven wrong once again.